A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

Dinner parties where the conversation intensifies and the host slips away, returning with a book. In this case, a Dover Thrift Edition of Great Speeches by Native Americans (2000).

Last night I read a speech by Oren Lyons delivered at a 1991 conference of the Aboriginal Law Association of McGill University, entitled "Sovereignty and the Natural World Economy."

"Land is the issue, land has always been the issue. We cannot trade our jurisdiction over lands and territories for money. Our lands and our right to govern ourselves are all we have. If we gamble our lands for money, jurisdiction and taxation, we will have lost because that is the white man's game."